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thanks so much for watching this friday afternoon, but don't move. chris matthews and "hardball" is next. shameless, let's play "hardball wto ". ♪ ♪ good evening. i'm chris matthews in washington. let me start tonight with this. i hated the iraq war, said so when i saw it coming. have said so since. the only time i held back from that early criticism which began when i saw the run up coming was in the early days of the tulloch pagz when it looked like our forces were being well received when i had no real choice, but to root that the forces that suffered already were being

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justified. who in this country would not have held that hope especially since it was too late to do anything else? i would much rather america succeed, by the way and be wrong than the other way around. anyway, but here we are, the other way around. it turns out in my opposition to the iraq war was well considered. the war didn't liberate people. it did what anyone could have predicted and it put the shia in power, took the sunni out of power and removed the buffer from iran. gave iran an ally and did nothing to bring peace to the middle east which is why the shamelessness of the hawks is so be on nouksous today, the people who took us into this ruthless propaganda now slink back into quiet, proud, i don't know what to think of a better word for it than shamelessness. they never come clean in selling the war. they will never come clean in admitting how naftly they succeeded in it. you will know the height to which they rose and the depths that they descended to hiding their guilt.

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he's opposed it from the beginning and ron susskin has won a pulitzer prize and author of " confidence men." recently appeared about a showtime document about life and legacy and says he doesn't have any regrets. let's watch cheney. >> i did what i did. it's all on the public record, and i feel very good about it. ♪ ♪ >> if i had to do it all over again i'd do it in a minute. >> cheney's right about one thing. it is all in the public record and what would that record show? what it shows is an unbelievable string lies, distortions and inept analysis on the part of him, the former v.p. take a look. >> regime change in iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. when the gravest of threats are eliminated the freedom of-loving peoples of the region would have

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the chance to promote values that could bring lasting peace. >> simply stated, there is no doubt that saddam hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. there is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us. >> do you think the american people are prepared for a long, costly and bloody battle with a significant american casualties? >> i don't -- i don't think it's likely to unfold that way, tim, because i think we will be greeted as liberators. >> i remember at the time it showed a modest majority of americans that opposed the war that would bring a significant level of casualty. the selling of the war announced not just that the war was justified and would have a limited cost. an insignificant level of casualties by americans and look what happened. your thoughts? >> you know, this was not either a war of choice nor a war of necessity as tim russert said. it was a war of will.

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simply the will of cheney, bush and the team. it was a matter of how to do it, find me a way to do this and 9/11 provided that excuse. what's interesting is when you look at the whole chain of events, is how many lies there were. this was not a question of them wondering about wmd. it is a question of building a case that they knew would be hollow and figuring out once they were successful and once the troops were in there and on the ground, no one would care about the rationale that just caused, so to speak for what gets us into iraq. ultimately, it shows itself to be a lie that was cynical and one that was pre-ordained and premeditated from the start of the administration. >> you know, i attribute it to something grander than evidence. it's my experience of dealing with cheney over the years. his brain soup. certain people are hawks and some people tend to be sadistic about it. sadistic. cheney strikes me as a guy who

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wants to rub out his enemies politically. any enemy. >> what you -- >> david first. >> what you see in the clip that you just showed in the showtime film by cut ler was a complete absence of self-reflection. no regrets. no we could have done it better. if we could do it all, i might have done this. >> do you think he enjoys this stuff? >> i think he believes and this may be psychotic on his part that eventually he will be redeemed and justified, but lawrence wilkinson in the documentary -- >> the chief of staff to colin powell. >> that will be on later tonight had a great word for this. he describes very simply what ron just said. he called it a hoax, and when you sell a hoax you've got two things. you've got to want it to happen and you have to believe it a little bit and you have to have somewhat of a psychological imperative and maybe a psychotic personality to make it work. >> you're getting into iran? >> you know, when you have a big lie. you have to have a big denial to

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follow it and the denial's got to be resilient. one of this size is the type that people go to the grave with, and it's hard to watch cheney, and the whole gang of neocons smiling at the camera saying now what do we do? next syria, next iran because the fundamental principle of this whole gang is one they still believe in preemptive war that the united states is the lone super power in the world and has a right to invade any country for any reason we decide. we don't even have to give the reason. that's the notion of preemptive war and they thought iraq would be a demonstration model and of course, it's a demonstration model of the very opposite of the limits of u.s. power when we strip ourselves was fundamental principles that have defined us as a nation, but right now, we just will look at the camera and not flinch because the fact is that they've left themselves little choice and it's hard to listen to at this moment, chris, because a real discussion about these ideas about preemption

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which is their big concept, their big domino theory actually would be good for the american people, but they won't do it. >> they're never going to oppose the idea of aggressive war because this is aggressive war and we're part of it now. in the run-up to the war in iraq nobody was a bigger hawk than richard pearl, a real intellectual, a member of the defense policy board. he repeatedly asserted that saddam hussein had ties to osama bin laden and was feverishly working to acquire a nuclear bomb and he promised, richard pearl did, that the war would be over in a matter of months. he was asked a very important question. i think it's a good question. his non-answer is informative. let's listen. >> ten years later, nearly 5,000 american troops dead, thousands more with wounds, hundreds of thousands of iraqis dead or wounded, when you think about this, was it worth it? >> i've got to say i think that is not a reasonable question. what we did at the time was done

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in the belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. you can't, a decade later go back and say we shouldn't have done that. >> so don't ask whether he should have gone in or not. another unrepentant war hawk. he was deputy secretary of the defense at the time of the invasion and here's what he wrote on fox news' website this week. as a strictly military matter if the war in iraq had ended when we got to baghdad it would have been victory. the point is the war went sour after the occupation began. if only someone had thought about that what happened after we invaded the country. back in 2003 he didn't seem too concerned about that. take a listen. >> there's been a good deal of comments and some of it quite outlandish about what our post-war requirements in iran. some of the higher end predictions such as the notion that it will take several hundred thousand u.s. troops to provide stability in post-saddam iraq are wildly off the mark.

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first, it's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-saddam iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and to secure saddam's security forces in his army. hard to imagine. >> you know -- >> i've never mastered the ability to speak as if every word of opinion i offer is a fact that's been received. it's already done and there's been a verdict cast. these neo-cons and many of them can be charming people. perle certainly is, and they're great to have dinner and they're fine, but they speak in a manner with total, absolute conviction or salesmanship, if you will, translates that it sounds like that's true when they argue things that they haven't been established and they deny they can go in there easy and it will be an easy war and we'll get the cheap oil and everything will be great and hardly anybody will get killed and they say it as if they're god. how do you explain that, ron.

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>> well, it's the notion of ideology. we have history's big idea. we may go to our grave not having the proof that we desire, but we will not flinch. we will stick to the script and remember, this is a gang of guys that have been together for a very long time, chris. they've got to scrape down and they don't want to be challenged what richard perle says don't ask why. did those young people die in vain, and that's the question that crushes them and that's why they're running right now as best they can. >> i wish in a way it would crush them because i don't see that crushing. i was driving in the car two days ago with my 13-year-old daughter when i heard that interview with richard perle. she looked at me when she said that's not a reasonable question and says who is this man? >> and what did you say? >> he's one of the people who gave us this war. >> i mean, to say that it's not a reasonable question to look at the cost of your action

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afterward to see if it justifies it and when paul wolfowitz says the only problem is that, you know, the war went on after we reached baghdad otherwise it had been great up until then is almost like saying if we had an arm of a million giant flying robots things would have turned out better. it's denying reality and to ron's point, you ask them how can they think this way, they're not concerned with the real world, with expertise, with measuring cost and benefits because they think they're above it. they don't pay the costs. this is all a giant lab experiment for them and they know better than the intelligence people, they know better than the -- >> it's a stupid answer, though. because admiral yamamoto who is not a bad guy, he didn't want to attack us at pearl harbor, he'die he would have said if it had stopped at pearl harbor it would have been a good war for us. from the time we arrived in baghdad, the war was over. no, it just began!

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>> your last thought, ryan. >> they ran an experiment on the whole globe and it failed and at this point that's why you have truth and reconciliation commissions. give everyone immunity, but at least get the truth out so we can have reconciliation before these guys leave the stage. >> thank you. i think that's a good idea. i wouldn't mind some water boarding along the way and get some information on these guys. >> it's not torture. >> it's not torture. hey, mr. cheney, you don't think this is torture and how about trying out this machine and maybe we'll get truth out of you. just kidding. >> we don't believe in that stuff, do we? >> you were a great reporter and a great author. thank you for coming on. >> my pleasure. >> as was said here and promotion here as well, we'll re-air the terrific document and the highest-rated show in the history of this network was this program tonight. if you didn't see it, see it tonight. hubris based on the book by mr. david corn about the fraudulent case for the iraq war and right after that we'll have a

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discussion. i'll be part of that panel to talk about how the bush administration misled the country into this costly war. is certainly was a destructive war. give it two hours and you'll know an awful lot by 11:00 eastern and of course, it will be at 9:00 and then at 10:00 those two parts. coming up, welcome to the new gop, the party where reasonable people can't say reasonable things. we have evidence of that and an example just the other day. ohio governor john kasich said he's in civil unions. one day later the staffer said he didn't mean that. what? he did mean it, he wasn't allowed to say it. in today's gop, if you're not far right, you're wrong. also we learned today that newt gingrich and rick santorum secretly talked about forming a massive ticket. what happened? big surprise. they couldn't agree on who was going to be president and who was going to be vice president. tonight, a great story of political mating and eventually cold feet. plus it's hard for michelle

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obama, or michele bachmann to top herself and she's done it not once, but twice this week, including that obama care, love this word, is killing people. remember the death squads and death panels. she's back with them again. michele bachmann pants on fire fact check coming later in the show. let me talk about the fringe right to know even a smidgen of history. this is "hardball" the place for politics. omnipotent of opportu. you know how to mix business... with business. and you...rent from national. because only national lets you choose any car in the aisle. and go. you can even take a full-size or above. and still pay the mid-size price. i could get used to this. [ male announcer ] yes, you could business pro. yes, you could. go national. go like a pro. a talking car. but i'll tell you what impresses me. a talking train.

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this ge locomotive can tell you exactly where it is, what it's carrying, while using less fuel. delivering whatever the world needs, when it needs it. ♪ after all, what's the point of talking if you don't have something important to say? ♪ next week the supreme court hears arguments on the two big cases about same-sex marriage. what a week it's going to be and people are lining up right now in front of the supreme court already ensuring they'll get a chance to watch the arguments live in that building. anyway, on tuesday the court will hear challenges to california's same-sex marriage ban known as prop 8. on wednesday the justices will hear arguments challenging the federal defense of marriage act, doma. what a week. the line began forming last night as our own justice department correspondent pete williams points out it may be

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the earliest we've ever seen a crowd form up there at the supreme court. we'll be right back. you hardly know i exist. that's too bad. 'cuz if my pressure relief valve gets stuck... [ booooooom! ] ...we hot water heaters can transform into rocket propelled wrecking balls. and if you got the wrong home insurance coverage, it's your bank account that might explode. so get allstate. [ dennis ] good hands. good home. make sure you have the right home protection. talk to an allstate agent. you know who you are. you can part a crowd, without saying a word... if you have yet to master the quiet sneeze... you stash tissues like a squirrel stashes nuts... well muddlers, muddle no more. try zyrtec®. it gives you powerful allergy relief. and zyrtec® is different than claritin® because zyrtec® starts working at hour one on the first day you take it. claritin® doesn't start working until hour three.

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>> welcome back to "hardball." the republican party has moved so far right that any time a hint of reasonableness kroeps into a republican's comments especially comments from an elected republican that person is quickly snapped back into line. that's what happened this week when ohio governor john kasich who i liked changed his position on gay civil unions. let's watch what he said. >> rob portman made news this past week with his position on gay marriage and changing it because of his son coming out. could you ever see a position, a time when you yourself might change your position? >> i really can't see one. i mean, i talked to rob and encouraged him, and, you know, if people want to have civil unions and have some way to transfer the resources i'm for that. i just think marriage is between a man and a woman, but if you want to have a civil union, that's fine with me.

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>> twice he said that one answer it's okay to have civil unions and gay marriage and civil unions are no small matter in ohio. in 2004, a ballot measure out in the general election amending the ohio constitution to outright ban gay marriage and civil unions and that was with the evangelical vote, and that's w.'s favor and winning him the presidential election with john kerrie and it was a huge issue in 2004 and it was against gay marriage and civil unions. the cleveland playing dealer was all over kasich's comment reporting that ohio governor john kasich saying he supports civil unions for same-sex couples and went on to quote the spokesperson, this is a staple from the spokesperson, the governor's position is unchanged. he opposes gay marriage and opposes changing ohio's constitution to allow for civil

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unions. well, so much for that. and he's far from the first republican to feel the heat from the fringe. joining me right now is msnbc contributor ron reagan and errol lewis. first, i'll comment on that one. kasich is a fine guy, a bit of a maverick and he's had a tough life in many ways and he says what comes to mind and he's thinking out loud and he says you know what? i'm not ready to go all of the way on my position, but civil union, i can live with that and civil you know knows and he said it again and within hours his flack comes out with a written statement to make sure it's getting picked up saying he didn't say what we heard him just say, ron. what's going on here? >> he gave is straight. he seemed to demonstrate that on the one hand he doesn't really have a position that he'ses is superintendentib susceptible to pressure from the right and he also demonstrated and this is relevant to the republican party as a whole that

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he's way behind the curve of history now. the public, as a whole is moving in a pretty clear wye this issue and mr. kasich seems to be moving and the republicans in the opposite direction. this is a recipe to end up in the ash can of history. >> you know, it's unfortunate when somebody won't stand up and fight for their principles which appears to be the case on some level with the governor. more important, though, is the party and the conservative forces that maybe made him backtrack because it's the governors who are sort of the secret weapon of the republican party, if they ever want to get back into national power in the way that they'd hoped. >> why are they? >> they are the ones who deal with practical matters and somebody like a chris christie in new jersey or nicky hail ney south carolina and rick perry in texas and ideally maybe even governor romney in massachusetts. they deal across the aisle and they deal with prak cal issues and they can help the party sort of see where the country's going and move ahead in a practical

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matter and take credit for it if the party is smart enough to take advantage of that. >> practicality, bipartisan thinking and nonideological thinking is the reason why people liked republican governors so easily. they don't like to make a big ideological choice and giving a reasonable bipartisan, non-ideological answer. i haven't thought much about it and it sounds fine to me. it's a reasonable answer as a gi that doesn't give much thought to something and even if you're a governor. here's another example, on monday morning at a press conference to review the rnc's 2012 autopsy, the chairman of the party reince priebus had kind words for senator rob portman who came out in favor of gay marriage. let's listen. >> how do you rein in the anti-gay and anti-women sentiments and bring these voters into the fold and who in the political arena do you think are the rising stars to accomplish this? >> i think senator portman made

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pretty big inroads last week. but i think it's about being decent. i think it's about dignity and respect that nobody deserves to have their dignity diminished and people don't deserve to be disrespected. >> later in that same day in the national review article to rnc, don't be pandering idiots. ralph reid cautioned against any softening on opposition to gay rights saying if the republican party tries to retreat from being a pro-marriage, pro-family party the big tent will become a pop very fast, and by the time priebus was on this network on wednesday he was back towing the party line. let's listen after he was snapped back into line here. >> i know what our principles are and i know our party believes marriage is between one man and one woman, but i also know that we have a party that's going to be inclusive and is going to listen to people and will allow differences of opinion in our party.

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>> let me go back to you, ron on this pro-family. what does that mean? in other words, if you're against gay couples who were together, women or men who were together five years, ten years and have better relationships than a lot of people who are straight, perhaps, in some cases and want to make that official legally and they've established the fact that they'll live together and have relations and they just want to be recognized and to some extent, appreciated by society. that isn't exactly wild living and that's not encouraging a lifestyle choice. that's recognizing love, to be a little bit romantic about it and recognizing reality, too. >> priebus digs himself a deeper hole here because he brings up principle, there is no principle here involved with marriage being a man and a woman. that's a preference. i'll give you an example of a principle, though. equality under the law. mr. priebus and the republican party appear to be prepared to throw equality under the law

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under the bus in order to pander to people who are bigoted. i don't think that'sa a recipe for success for the future. >> he's a guy that knows how to count votes and he's trying to explain to the rest of his party that the votes aren't going to be looking like they're not going go in their favor if they don't change some of this stuff. he's trying to move people forward and he's having quite a time of it. let me throw out a shocker for you. in utah, salt lake city went for barack obama. i don't know how many wake-up calls the party will have to get before they realize they'll need to make some changes. >> that's why i started working in campaigns out there and there are reasonable people in salt lake city, i shouldn't say that. there are a lot of reasonable people in salt lake city. thank you, ron reagan and thank you, errol lewis. up next, chris christie meets the press. the third grade press. really. this is "hardball," the place for politics.

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♪ ♪ ♪ back to "hardball." now the "sideshow." first the week with chris christie's and new jersey younger generation. it's not unusual on whether christie will get questions on whether he'll run for president and not usually from someone who won't be able to vote in 2016. >> um, you've done a great job here in new jersey, and i was wondering. if you were thinking of running for president? >> do you work for msnbc? i'm not thinking about running for president right now because i've got a job to do here, and i've got an obligation to all these folks. you can't worry about fourth grade until you finish third grade, you know? i can't worry about this until i do this job. >> earlier in the week christie

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took on an even younger crowd. a class of kindergartners. >> did you come here in a limo? >> no, i came here in something even better. i came in in a helicopter. >> whoa! >> it landed on your field over there. what was i doing? >> nothing. >> nothing? that's pretty usual. probably just talking, right? that's what this job is about, a lot of talking. >> was the president's wife enchanting? >> was the presidentay wife enchanting? yes, actually, she was. she's very smart and she's very nice. >> good hit as we say in politics. next if nothing else, georgia republican saxby chambliss leads the week with comments that leaves you thinking what's that supposed to mean? on whether he would change his position on gay marriage. chambliss says i'm not gay, so i'm not going to marry one.

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he is not alone in making a situation based on the his own personal situation. first former senator john kyl of arizona. in '09 he wanted to cut out the part that required employers to cover basic maternity care because it made everyone's insurance more expensive. >> i don't need maternity care, and so requiring that to be in my insurance policy is something that i don't need and will make the policy more expensive. >> that's big thinking. anyway, a colleague of his later pointed out that kyl's morgue likely needed some services at one point and then there was the fiasco overstates affected by hurricane sandy. back in january, 67 house republicans voted against providing flood insurance for sandy victims and it turns out that 37 of them have a history of supporting aid after natural disasters when their own states were affected. missouri congressman sam graves was one of them, and here's what

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he said in 2011 when his state was dealing with a severe flood damage. i urge the president to approve this assistance without delay. many communities along the river have been stretched to the limit preparing for and fighting this unprecedented flood. >> finally oklahoma senator jim? hoff in 2006 had this to say during a debate on gay marriage again. >> as you see here, and i think this maybe is the most important prop that we'll have during the entire debate. >> my wife and i have been married 47 years. we have 20 kids and grandkids. i'm really proud to say that in the recorded history of our family we've never had a divorce or any kind of a homosexual relationship. >> so, mr. inhofe lives in a world of straight, marital perfection. la dee da, but in this statement of self-celebration had to do with the debate on same-sex marriage? it's anyone's guess. up next, we learned today that newt gingrich and rick santorum

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secretly wanted to form a ticket last year, never happened because they being aren't figure out who should be at the top of the ticket and who should be vice president and president. we broke it tonight. you're watching "hardball," the praise for politics. vo: from the classic lines to the elegant trim in each and every piece, bold will make your reality a dream.

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i'm bertha coombs with your cnbc market wrap. upbeat earnings helped send stocks higher. the s&p was up 11 while the nasdaq adds 22. nike shares jumping 11% following its better than expected earnings report. tiffany also rallied after a strong profit report. people like the bling and eu finance ministers are planning to meet sunday about the financial crisis in cyprus. cypriot leaders say they're near

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a deal to raise billions and secure that bailout. that's it from cnbc. we're first in business worldwide. now back to "hardball." ♪ ♪ ♪ welcome back to "hardball." allow your mind to wander back that 2012, the republican primaries and imagine mitt romney facing a right swing duo or duet of newt gingrich and rick santorum running together on anyone, but romney ticket. an anyone, but romney ticket. being he have won with that crowd double teaming him. they actually held tucks together about joining forces and running on a ticket. they couldn't decide, this is the funny part on who would be the presidential candidate and the vice presidential candidate. the santorum-gingrich duet would have been a serenade to the

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obama headquarters in chicago. josh green broke this story at bloomberg businessweek this week and michael covers politics for "time." >> congratulations, john. i thought we had gleaned every iota of ruby fun out of the 2012 election and you found this morsel. tell me how you got it it, if you can, and tell me what it means. >> sure. i was interviewing newt last friday for "businessweek" and i'd heard rumors of this and i asked him about it and yeah, they'd done it and from there it was about putting together the pieces and re-creating this special chapter of the 2012 campaign. >> for the nugget of fun, did he really think, knowing newt's brilliant ego, did he really think there was a chance he could have convinced rick santorum, the leader of the cultural religious right to take number two on his ticket because he must have thought that because he didn't go into this thing thinking he'd be number two. >> oh, he absolutely thought that.

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that's why it fell apart and even when his campaign was losing steam and santorum was winning, he still envisioned himselfas top dog on the ticket. >> explain. >> as it was told to me, gingrich gave a long, historical soliloquy how in the part when the party couldn't rally on a sickle nominee in the convention the party elders would go for the senior statesman and gingrich regarded himself as that senior statesman and thought that -- and thought that santorum ought to defer to him. >> is everybody a senior statesman? >> i don't think -- just because you've been around a while. he was dumped as speaker of the house. he's not samuraibur raburn. >> let's not dwell on details. he had lost florida when the talks began and his own campaign had collapsed from within. it's a bit like saying you're tab and rc cola and if we combine forces we can take on coca-cola. >> it would taste terrible.

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by the way, ginning rifrp would have been great in this business. he's conceptual and a terrible candidate and he likes to go to the zoo apparently a lot. he told us simply, i'd like to have santorum drop out and he'd have like mead to drop out. of course, that's obvious. a month before their negotiations he'd been referring to the senator as a junior partner in the trail in new hampshire. take a listen. >> i would say in term of -- of -- if you think of us as partners he would clearly in historical experience have been the junior partner. he's not a bad person. i want to be clear with this, but i don't know that he has any track record of being able to organize a large-scale campaign that i'm describing or being able to then govern on a large scale, and i think that's important. i don't think you just want to hire someone to get through the election. you want to hire someone to change washington.

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>> josh, again back to the ego of that guy. he never held an executive position in his life. he was elected speaker and then dumped as speaker. they wanted to get rid of him and they held a majority and here is a party which manages to get back to speakership in the majority position and thanks in part to newt's amazing campaign skills. he can't govern. they dump him and he comes out and brags and at least i can be an executive. >> explain. >> look, he's always viewed himself as an executive as this grand figure, historical figure who led his party to the majority and can do so once again, and i think he viewed at the time and he viewed santorum as a junior partner and even when he was losing badly i think he still viewed santorum as a junior partner and in fairness you have to get up and look in the mirror and think you can be president or else you can't get out on the campaign trail day after day after day doing what these guys do. the campaign did revolve around

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trashing romney as one republican called another these day, a moderate. that was a big knock on him. here was santorum at last year's cpac. >> we're not going to win this election, ladies and gentlemen, because the republican candidate has the most money to beat up their opponent and win the election. we won in 2010 because conservatives rallied. they were excited about the contrasts. we always talk about how are we going to get the moderates. why would an undecided voter vote for the candidate of a party who the party is not excited about? >> you know, i think it does go back to that and now we're on to this thing, and do you think a party of conscious conservatism could have beaten this duet had a chance of beating romney because he wasn't that authentic. he was a terrible candidate and if you look at santorum and gingrich won that went into the

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mississippi river and the south. there wasn't a lot of pull for either of them in big states like new york or california and it would have been a long shot run and the interesting part of this thought experiment was if they had beaten romney and then gotten thumped which they most likely would have, and it was a race about the economy and it was not a race about social issues and it's not a race about the various flaws that gingrich has. right now the republican party is fast moving away from what santorum said. we don't need to tell ourselves that we're great if we stay more conservative. the republican party as an institution is trying desperately to expand itself beyond that and while conservatives are saying what santorum is saying if only we had been more pure in 2012. >> how can he go to the senate at the same time you want to go right. there's a struggle, but if -- >> my hunch is they're going to go right because they'll see it coming and they'll say we're not going to be there and let's have

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some fun. great reporting and great scoop. michael sheer, thank you, as well. >> up next, michele bachmann has a knack for stretching the truth and she does and he's back at it this week. our bachmann pants on fire fact check. this is "hardball," the place for politics. while keeping out threats to your operations? it's not working! yes it is. welcome to tyco integrated security. with world-class monitoring centers and thousands of qualified technicians. we've got a personal passion to help your business run safer, smarter, and sharper. we are tyco integrated security. and we are sharper.

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>> a plan to change the way the electoral votes are allocated is gaining traction and now at michigan. the republican secretary of state out there says she supports changing the current

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winner take all system for a system that divide says the votes proportion alley by congressional dift licht which would help the republican candidates run for example president. delegates is a republican-state convention that approved the resolution to change the system. michigan hasn't voted for a presidential candidate since 1988. we'll be right back. [ lorenzo ] i'm lorenzo. i work for 47 different companies. well, technically i work for one. that company, the united states postal service® works for thousands of home businesses. because at usps.com® you can pay, print and have your packages picked up for free. i can even drop off free boxes. i wear a lot of hats.

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lap of luxury with lots of staffing. living in the life of luxury with lots of staffing. >> a new book is out talking about the perks and excess of the $1.4 billion a year presidency that we're paying for and this is a lifestyle that is one of excess. now we find out that there are five chefs on air force one. we are also the ones who are paying for someone to walk the president's dog, paying for someone to walk the president's dog? now, why are we doing that when we can't even get a disabled veteran into the white house for a white house tour? that isn't caring. >> well, you can think that through and judge it the way i judged it. "the washington post" pointed out that no doubt the $1.4 billion figure and the person who walks bo, the dog, is the

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groundskeeper who has walked every dog since president nixon. got it? and then michele bachmann warned about the dangers of obama care. >> the american people, especially vulnerable women, vulnerable children, vulnerable senior citizens, now get to pay more and they get less. that's why we're here, because we're saying let's repeal this failure before it literally kills women, kills children, kills senior citizens. >> well, it's all pretty loopy. any way, lizz winstead, what a brain you have, and ken vogel. first of all, i'm going to be careful. i think ethnicity is a factor here. you go after a president about dog walking and five chefs on the air force one like you can't have that because of your background. we don't usually talk about presidents and their little lifestyle aspects normally.

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why is she bringing up these things now? i think it's nasty stuff. that's what i think it is. >> it is nasty. and i think that -- i think michele bachmann is one of those people who takes literally, if you see something, say something? where anything that goes into her brain, she spouts it out without any filter and it's sort of a stabbing and i would say, chris, that more people are wondering why michele bachmann gets one penny from the taxpayer's job rather than the president -- >> i think she's more disdiscriminating than that. i think she saw an article about the first lady working, sweating, planting stuff. she wouldn't mention it. she had to go after the dog walking. >> you don't think? >> i'm just kidding. and so are you. let me go back to ken vogel. this obsession with her about the investigative demands, we've got to get this out, we've got to get this out, finding the

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unamericans, the anti-american attitudes in the congress, we can't established this president getting that kind of perk, if he ever did. >> yeah. what she's found is there is a constituency for this stuff, within the fever swamps of the internet, it's at cpac, and there is the -- you know, it kind of tests the bounds of how far you can go with this constituency. she was riding high in the polls of the gop presidential primary at one point in 2012. she's raising a ton of money online. there is a limit to it and we saw it because she dropped out of the race after placing poorly in iowa. she barely won her re-election in a heavily republican district. she won by 4,300 votes and the challenger is thinking about running again. we saw a calculated decision by her to pull back and to be a lower profile and play less to this constituency but it's almost like she can't help

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herself and you go her the mike and spotlight and away she goes. >> congresswoman bachmann's cpac speech were not the first time her numbers were a bit sketchy. in 2010 bachmann claimed that obama's trip came with a pricey tag. >> the president will be taking a trip to india that is expected to cost the taxpayers $200 million a day. he's taking 2,000 people with him. he'll be renting out over 870 rooms in india and these are five-star hotel rooms at the taj ma hall hotel. >> you know what i don't get, let me go to you, li sflchlt z, kennedy flew to florida and nixon flew to florida. we consider it the reasonable perk with the toughest job in the country. i go back to this, i think there's an ethnic feature here.

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why is she trashing the first african-american president for living like a president? and that is what she's doing. >> i tell you, i grew up -- i was born and raised in minnesota and when she was on in the statehouse, she -- you know, there's great comments from her about terry schiavo. i mean, she's so off always, chris, she's consistently been off, that the one thing that i and i'm normally unwith of those people that is very wary of her and is this a race thing and with her i think she's called from god to do this, she thinks whatever coming out of her is coming through god. it's really -- it's inexplicable, really. >> well, maybe that frees her up from blame, that she thinks she's the oracle. >> i think she does. she thinks she's the oracle. ignorance is no excuse. thank you, li sdplchlt z

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winstead, and ken vogel, great point. when we return, the tiniest -- how do you talk about anything if you don't know any history and that's michele bachmann. you're watching "hardball," a place for politics. but there are some things i've never seen before. this ge jet engine can understand 5,000 data samples per second. which is good for business. because planes use less fuel, spend less time on the ground and more time in the air. suddenly, faraway places don't seem so...far away. ♪ [ male announcer ] how could switchgrass in argentina, change engineering in dubai,

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